In a high-tech world, lowly pencil often still the write tool

Andrew P. Kersey, COLUMBIA NEWS SERVICECHICAGO TRIBUNE

When Hymen L. Lipman patented the world's first pencil with an attached eraser 150 years ago, he certainly didn't anticipate its having to compete one day with BlackBerrys and online crossword puzzles.

But the eraser pencil has exhibited remarkable staying power amid the rise of the typewriter, the ballpoint pen, the personal computer and all manner of modern hand-held messaging devices over its century-and-a-half existence. In fact, the U.S. is the single largest market for wood-encased pencils today, most of which now come from China. Even the more expensive mechanical pencil has not replaced what is for many writers and note-takers a tried and true basic. It has seen a steady increase in production over the last decade, according to figures from the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association.

"There's a historic preference for the pencil in the U.S.," said Charles Berolzheimer, 47-year-old heir to the Berol pencil brand. "Maybe partly because there's a tactile sensation to making a mark on paper with it." His family has manufactured pencils or their raw materials for six generations, and today he is the president of California Cedar Products Co., which exports the state's high quality incense cedar to manufacturers abroad.

Easy to use

Pencils have also remained popular because of their reliability and ease of use. "It becomes a part of you, an extension of your hand," said Henry Petroski, professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University. His book, "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance," is widely seen as the definitive work on the subject.

"People also twirl the pencil as something to do with their hands while thinking or listening," he said.

Pencils are still widely used in a number of professions, including drafting, architecture and news reporting. Among the most important things in a journalist's tool kit is a pencil, New York Times correspondent Hassan Fatah told a class of Columbia journalism students last year, as a pen might leak or freeze in cold weather when out reporting.

Petroski agrees. "With a pen, you never know if it's going to write properly or leave a blob of ink at its first contact with paper," he said. "The first mark you make with a pencil, however, will be the same as the last."

Pencils also don't run out of batteries or ink, and they can be replaced with mere pocket change.

But Lipman's stroke of genius was not always so universally applauded. At first, "a lot of school teachers opposed them and wanted them outlawed," said Petroski. "They felt that 'erasered' pencils encouraged students to be careless because they didn't have to get it right the first time."

Prototypical design

The prototypical design involved a 2- to 3-inch slot cut into the end of the pencil's shaft, filled with a flat piece of prepared India rubber and held in place with glue.

The design allowed for the eraser to be sharpened as well, to accommodate mathematicians, architects and other artists who might need to carefully clear away a mark here or there.

Today, eraser pencils are the writing implement of choice for solving crossword puzzles and Sudoku, according to famed New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz. Though a pen user himself, he described pencils as "more tactilely satisfying" for many people.

Most of his solvers opt for puzzling with paper and pencil, despite the availability of the crossword online. "It's easier to look at an entire puzzle on one page," he said, which the online version doesn't allow. And of those paper puzzlers, "Most people don't have enough confidence to use pen," he said.

The Independent of London reported a 700 percent increase in pencil sales two years ago due to the Sudoku craze.

Curiously, most Europeans still buy their erasers separately from their pencils, said Petroski. "A pencil's eraser tends to dry out and get dirty long before its lead runs down, and Europeans are more sensitive to issues like that."

The pencil's history, of course, stretches back much further than 19th Century America. Ancient Greeks and Romans used a flat piece of lead called a stylus to draw faint lines on papyrus or waxed slates.

When a large graphite deposit was discovered in 16th Century England, the sooty mineral became widely used as a writing tool, often wrapped in string or sheepskin, and soon after was inserted into sticks of wood hollowed out by hand. "Dry pencils," so called to distinguish them from the fine paintbrushes from which they derived their name, were first mass-produced in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1662.

Lipman's addition to the implement's history certainly has a devoted following. "The pencil will never become obsolete," said Doug Martin, who works as a design engineer in Bowling Green State University's department of chemistry and, ironically, spends his days designing computer interface models. "They're just too handy, too convenient."

As a collector with over 10,000 pencils displayed or otherwise scattered around his house, he is drawn to their history and to the fact that they are relatively inexpensive and do not take up a lot of space, he said.

On the production side, Berolzheimer values today's pencil industry for its truly global presence. The raw cedar his company exports is used for making slats in China, which are then shipped to Europe to be made into pencils, often with imported Malaysian rubber, finally making their way back to the U.S. market.

Nevertheless, he admitted his initial career plans didn't include carrying on the family business.

"I had originally planned on going into computer programming," he said.